1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to packetized telecommunication networks and more particularly to use of a centralized feature platform.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a telecommunication system receives a call, the system often needs to authenticate the call in some manner, to ensure, e.g., the validity of a calling card number, a personal identification number or some other credential associated with the call. Traditionally, in circuit switched telephone networks the standard call flow for an authentication service for a calling card is as follows. Assume a calling card call is received in a telephone network. The call is connected, to a facility having authentication capability, e.g., an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) function that prompts the caller for pertinent information, such as the calling card number and the number the caller is trying to reach. The IVR function either validates the call or drops the call. If the call is validated by the authentication facility, then the call is connected to its calling destination through the authentication function. Thus, as shown in FIG. 1, the facility 101 that validated the call functions as an in-line relay between the call origin 103 and the call destination 105 since the call is still connected through the authentication facility.
While that solution may be acceptable for switched circuit networks (e.g., for telephone systems with class 4 and above circuit switches) which tend to have a lot of “edge centralization” on the network, for emerging packet switched based telephone networks, placing complex functionality in multiple places on the edge of a network can be expensive and therefore undesirable.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide the functionality of feature services such as authentication without the cost and complexity of duplicating resources in multiple places in a packet-based telecommunications network.